


Head Caught Flame

by LMX



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Asexual Character, BDSM (discussed), Character Death Fix, F/M, Fix-It, I feel sad when side-characters die and are never mentioned again, Multi, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, The Fix-it isn't for Eliza but it could be?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 14:19:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15664920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LMX/pseuds/LMX
Summary: Sometimes you don't see the way things fit together until after it's all fallen apart





	Head Caught Flame

**Author's Note:**

> Title for Lorde's Buzzcut Season (seemed appropriate). I've not seen this weeks episode yet but I'm hoping it goes something like this...

Doc had been ignoring Dolls at the end of the bar, watching him work. The Agent had been nursing his orange juice for the last hour, and Doc wasn't sure he'd seen him sit so still for so long outside of a stakeout.

He thought he might sit there like a statue for the rest of the night, but the next time he passed by, Dolls leaned forward, and in a conversational tone said, "You know love doesn't always have to be about sex, right?"

Certainly not what he'd expected, but Doc wasn't one to be thrown by non-sequiturs. "*You* should know, there's a lot of times sex ain't about love at all," he said, with an air of one sharing a truth of the universe.

Dolls considered this. "You and Wynonna - is that..."

"None of your goddamned business, is what that is," Doc replied sharply, too much between the three of them to let that kind of conversational gambit go unchallenged. "What 'xactly are you fishing for here Xavier?"

"Not sure I know," he chuckled. "Just wanted some conversation I guess."

"You and Eliza, what was that exactly?" Doc pressed. "Haven't seen many tears for someone who looked happy to give their life for you."

There was a pause, and Doc almost looked regretful when Dolls put down his drink and stood.

"Not all grief is loud," his parting shot as he left the bar.

-

"Eliza was my beard," Dolls said into the silence, a good hour into a stakeout that looked set to take the night. Wynonna was pacing the perimeter of the site - a shadowy figure in the distance - and she stumbled as Dolls' announcement cut across the comms. Doc just looked on, uncomprehending, from the passenger seat of the truck.

"Am I supposed to..." he started.

"I'm not gay," Dolls clarified, though Doc didn't look any more enlightened. "I care about people, I like caring for people, but I don't like... sex. Really at all. Black Badge was a paramilitary organisation; the kind of people they hired, the people I was working with..."

"Not really that liberal minded?" Wynonna offered on the comms. Her silhouette was still now, standing in the light from the nearest streetlamp, staring back at the truck.

"They would have understood Eliza, I think. She'd beat most of the sexist shit out of them in the first year of training. But she didn't want to have to explain, some things are just personal. It made it easier for us both if the people we were working with thought we were dating. And it meant I had someone to come home to who didn't want sex and she got someone to take care of her when... when her partners weren't very good at aftercare."

"You pretended to be sleeping together, to stop your brothers in arms asking personal questions?"

"Welcome to the conversation, Doc," Wynonna chimed in dryly.

"You don't like sex?" was Doc's followup question.

"I like people. I don't..."

"Love isn't always about sex," Doc echoed, with something like realisation dawning.

"Do you like kissing?" Wynonna's voice broke in. "Dolls, you know you could have..."

"I like it the way you do it."

"I... Like I...?" Wynonna spluttered to a stop.

"Well that's one way to shut the woman up."

The truck door was pulled open sharply, and both men jumped. "The way I do it?" Wynonna demanded, out of breath from closing the distance to the truck.

"Without any warning," Dolls clarified. "Fast, short, unexpected. Like some kind of force of nature."

"You are a fucking sap."

And then there were demons, and the conversation got completely derailed.

-

"You'll forgive me the impropriety," Doc said, slumping a little further into the couch as Dolls started gathering up empty takeout containers into a pile for disposal. "But my curiosity cannot be sated. I simply must ask."

"Doc," Wynonna warned, with the tone of an ongoing argument. "We talked about this."

"Talk may not best describe an argument that ends in sex." Doc hesitated, his eyes flicking to Dolls. "No offence."

"Sex doesn't offend me, Doc," Dolls replied, and picked up the pile of trash he'd made. "I just don't want to do it."

It only took him a moment to take the empties to the bin, but he'd been hoping Doc would have dropped this line of questioning by the time he got back. No such luck.

"Which leads me to my burning question," Doc grinned.

"Oh my God," Wynonna hissed, and headed into the kitchen. Given as Dolls had seen the single bottle of mustard and carton of (expired) milk that made up the contents of the fridge, he could only assume she was still hunting for the mythical bottle of unopened booze that Waverly kept implying she'd 'lost' last time she went on an alcohol hiding spree.

He wanted to go with her. Doc's shark grin was a threat in itself, and there were very few things Dolls hated talking about more than himself.

"Does the man like to watch?" Doc finally drawled, eyebrow raised and gaze lecherous. He was quite clearly trying to get a raise out of him, so Dolls fell back on old tricks - unapologetic honesty was the best way to frustrate someone looking for a reaction.

"I've watched some porn, but unless both parties are totally into it and I'm in the right mood, it doesn't really do anything for me. Eliza had one partner who she trusted enough to go a bit further with, and I spotted for them a couple of times - that's pretty intimate, but you're concentrating too hard to really find it sexual..."

Doc's expression had been crestfallen - maybe at the spoiling of his fun - but now it turned puzzled. "You'll have to explain for the old timer - you 'spotted'?"

"Oh..." Dolls stalled somewhat, left with an image that he'd been trying not to dwell on. Eye contact with Eliza, her hands grasping his, tightening to an almost crushing extent as Xiu loomed over them both to press a gentle kiss against the raised line her final lash had left. "Eliza liked to have someone she trusted challenge her - hurt her sometimes, within set rules."

"Hurt her?" Doc sounded horrified, his expression quickly turning angry. "And you let..."

"I didn't 'let' anyone do anything that wasn't previously discussed, agreed, asked for. But even when everything's talked out first, sometimes things get too much or something changes, so you have words to use to stop things. To make things safer."

"But..."

"You asked," Wynonna interrupted Doc's objection sharply from the door to the kitchen. "So listen."

Doc huffed, but fell silent.

"When safewords aren't an option, there are other things you can do, but Eliza asked me... to watch, and stop things if I thought she needed it. It was intimate. I'm not into the same things she is... was. I'm not into pain," Dolls paused to breathe through the spike of visceral loss that a confusion of tenses always brought, and started again. "I'm not into pain as an aphrodisiac, but it was intimate seeing her get something that made her feel good."

"'If words aren't an option' - you're talking about a gag."

"Doc," Wynonna's tone was a warning.

"To each his own," he shrugged, obviously still uncomfortable, but not willing to risk Wynonna's ire.

Dolls snorted a laugh and they both gave him a confused look. "For this one the phrase 'your kink is not my kink' seems more fitting."

Wynonna rolled her eyes. "So, if we're done discussing hardcore bondage and masochism..."

There was a squeak of Waverly-esque terror from the doorway and Wynonna flinched as Nicole shuffled into view.

"Discussing..." Nicole looked between the three of them. "You know what, so long as it's safe, sane and consensual, I *never*, *ever* want to know," she said firmly, and headed for the stairs. She reappeared a moment later. "Waverly and I are going over to mine tonight," she said pointedly. "We won't be back until tomorrow," and she disappeared again.

"Oh, we're never, ever going to hear the end of this," Wynonna bemoaned.

"You find that bottle yet?" Doc asked, perhaps a little weaker than he'd intended. When Wynonna shook her head sorrowfully, he reached back for his jacket and pulled out a bottle. "Lucky, then, that I came prepared."

Wynonna leapt forward and grabbed the bottle, pressing it to her breast as Doc rolled his eyes. "I think it might be love," he mused, and ignored Wynonna's dirty look.

"Hey," Waverly greeted from the door, "Nicole says we're going over to..." She was cut off with a 'whoop' as Nicole dragged her to the door. "Bye guys!" she called out, and the door slammed behind them.

"I should be going too," Dolls mused, feeling the mood change sharply.

"Really?" Wynonna said, "After all that and..."

Dolls shook his head, suddenly uncomfortable between the two forces of nature and still hurting down to his bones with his head full of Eliza's ecstatic gaze.

"Really going. I'll see you in the office tomorrow." He stood and gathered up his coat. "Just... don't play with bondage drunk, okay. Not either of you."

Wynonna flushed red, but still put the bottle down on the sideboard. Doc watched her do it with some kind of new horror in his eyes, as if imagining what Dolls' story might have inspired.

"Have a good night," Doll called, and headed for the door without looking back. It was kind of nice, he mused as he drove away. To be considered, acknowledged, but allowed to leave on his own terms. It was something he hadn't had in a long time.

-

The thing about losing a good boss was that you suddenly realised how much they were doing behind the scenes to keep your job as simple and stress-free as possible.

Wynonna was not a fan of bureaucracy, but she was a woman who ran around their little section of the countryside with a gun, threatening apparently peaceable locals in the eyes of anyone not close enough to see the demon peering out, and she didn't always get that right. Before, she'd assumed most people had just heard about her, and written it off as eccentricities of a small town.

Turns out, Dolls had been fielding a lot of complaints. And by a lot, she mean... well, her desk was groaning and she was mostly using the teetering pile of documents as an excuse to work out of Shorty's.

"If you'd just deal with it once in a while," Doc wheedled. "Just a couple at a time..."

"There will always be *more* is the thing. Always. You'd think people'd never seen any of the weirdness this town creates, with all their going on and on."

"And I sympathise with your dilemma, I truly do, but you're scaring away my business, always being in here."

"I'm scaring away... *I*..."

Doc gestured to the empty bar, and Wynonna huffed a couple more times, but slid off the barstool, gathering up her maps and photographs.

She hesitated, slid one surveillance photograph to one side to reveal Doll's sharp edged scrawl on the document beneath it.

"I just miss him, you know," she mused. "I just..."

"I do know. I do know," Doc soothed. "And it's alright to miss him, but don't make out it's because he did all of your paperwork, because that's no where near the truth."

Wynonna groaned again, tidying the papers in her hands. "It's not *just* because of the paperwork then, how about that?"

-

In the immediate aftermath, there weren't a lot of words. There was a fair bit of shouting and maybe some screaming, but then Nicole turned up with the fire extinguisher from downstairs to put the worst of the fires out, and Doc finally pulled the fire blanket out from the kitchen and doused the rest. Or... at least as well as he could, given as Dolls seemed to be the one starting the fires and even down on one knee as he was, the fire blanket wasn't quite big enough to cover him entirely.

Doc pulled the blanket back a little, just enough to see Dolls' face, and a soft wavering flame started to lick across the newly exposed bit of skin on Dolls' head. Dolls blinked up at him, seemingly unbothered by the fire.

"Doc?" he asked, and his voice was dry and low, and Doc was definitely not going to cry right now. "I think I'm naked."

"It's getting hot in here," Jeremy muttered, still sounding more than a little hysterical. "Let's take off all our clothes."

"Was I dead?" Dolls said.

"Phoenix," Nicole said, giving the ceiling fan a blast from the extinguisher as it started to smoulder again. "We were wrong about the dragon thing all along. Phoenix." She was maybe sounding a little hysterical herself, but she was the only one holding a fire extinguisher, so...

"Can Phoenixes... Phoenices... Can a Phoenix breathe fire?" Jeremy asked. "Don't Phoenixes have feathers?"

"Unless anyone has first hand experience with Dragons, Phoenixes or otherwise," Doc broke in, regretting banning Wynonna from working in Shorty's. He didn't know what she was going to do that the three of them couldn't, but he wanted her right here, right now. "Let's continue to not-know things and get this man out of Shorty's before he burns the whole damned place to the ground."

"I don't... I think I'm naked," Dolls reiterated, standing and turning towards the door he'd burned to charcoal on the way in. He paused when he came face to face with Wynonna in the doorway.

There was a tense moment, and Nicole's hands flexed on the extinguisher, bracing against the need for movement. Dolls shrugged the fire blanket down off his shoulders to wrap around his waist, and Wynonna stepped forwards as the flames sprang up on the exposed skin, her hand extended.

Doc moved to snatch her back before she could plant her hand in that flame. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he demanded.

"Feathers," Wynonna pointed, and sure enough Doll's shoulders and chest were covered in fine, downy golden feathers beneath the points of flame.

"Well... damn."

-

"Hey, Dolls?"

The 'hmm' that Doc got in reply was distracted, Dolls focusing on reining in the flames that still flickered around him whenever he lost concentration. It looked like hard work, even if the flames weren't burning his skin, but they'd decided that if Dolls could control it without needing the chemical concoction Black Badge had been forcing on him then it would be better for everyone.

He hadn't set any furniture on fire for days now, so Doc figured he was doing pretty well.

Dolls looked over at him, and Doc realised he'd started a sentence without really knowing how he planned to say what needed saying.

"Wynonna... really missed you," he said, hating his own words for how wrong they were.

"Wynonna did, huh?" Dolls said, a smile just touching the corner of his lips.

"I didn't..." Damnit all, but he wasn't usually this bad with words. He was a legendary smooth talker, but here was he stumbling around like a foal new to his legs.

"You didn't miss me?" Dolls teased, and Doc grit his teeth.

"I didn't understand what you meant, about loving without the sex. About *showing* love." Better, he breathed through the waver in his voice. "I think... the two of us, Wynonna and I... We're better at taking care of ourselves than at taking care of anyone else. It's what we're used to, what we were doing before we knew what we know now. I care of her a lot, but I don't do well at *taking* care of her. I think..." This was torture, Doc realised, far worse than any he'd suffered before. "I think the two of us love you, Dolls. We should have said something long before you died for us, but it doesn't make it any less true now you're back. And... well, I've heard it said you enjoy taking care of the people you love."

"I have said that," Dolls smiled, his expression warm.

"What with us being people who fail to take good enough care of one another and us really not needing another body in the bedroom... well I think that's a pretty good fit, don't you?"

Dolls smiled. "Why Doc, that was almost smooth," he said.

And then the drapes caught on fire and that put the conversation on the back burner for a little while.

So to speak.


End file.
